by Michael Newdow

Why
did I do it? The answer is easy: our current system is wrong. We have
rules, and we’re supposed to abide by them, but we haven’t been
abiding by them at all in the arena of the relationship between government
and citizens. We’ve taken a purely religious ideal—one that millions
of Americans expressly deny—and incorporated it into our government.
Such activity is expressly prohibited by our Constitution. This is my
country just as much as it is anyone else’s, and I demand from my
government the same respect for my views regarding religion that is given
to those with alternative ideals. I’m not someone the majority
“tolerates.” I don’t thank the masses for “allowing” me to not
worship as I please. I am not a second-class citizen who should be seen
and not heard.

The United States of America is just as much an
atheistic entity as it is a theistic entity, with zero being the measure
of each. When Congress placed “In God We Trust” on all our coins and
currency, when it inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance,
when the Supreme Court starts its sessions with “God save the United
States and this honorable court,” when presidents take their oaths of
office with chaplains offering prayers to God, when every legislative
session begins with a prayer to God—and on and on—those who disbelieve
in a supreme being are explicitly told that “they are outsiders, not
full members of the political community,”while theistic Americans are
told “that they are insiders, favored members of the political
community.” That language—repeated time and again by the Supreme Court
in describing Establishment Clause violations—details exactly what has
been occurring with increasing frequency in our society. The responses of
our legislators and our president in the aftermath of the Pledge case
decision serve only to highlight the depth of the constitutional
transgression.

This is a civil rights campaign, as important and as
serious as any in our history. To be sure, other politically
disenfranchised minorities—such as women, people of color, and the
disabled—have the added burden of physical attributes that make them
immediately identifiable. Yet the biases and prejudices each class has
endured are little different. Government cannot eliminate invidious
opinions, but it can—and, when the opinions are based on religious
differences, it constitutionally must—stop fostering such beliefs. We
greatly improved our society when we altered our laws to stop encouraging
racial segregation, barring women from the workplace, and ignoring the
disabled. The goal of the Pledge lawsuit is only to attain further
improvement.

In 1958, a Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of
our citizens would not vote for a Black candidate for president merely on
the basis of race. In 1999, the last time the poll was taken, the figure
was 4 percent. For Catholics, Jews, and women, the latest “would not
vote for” figures were 4 percent, 6 percent, and 7 percent,
respectively. Yet when it came to atheists, that 1999 poll showed that 48
percent of Americans still would not vote for someone merely on that
religious basis. In my opinion, this sort of prejudice is in no small
measure perpetuated when our government tells everyone with a coin in his
or her pocket that our nation officially, openly—even proudly—proclaims
that disrespecting atheists is fine.

Could my quest for equality backfire? Absolutely. I
have little doubt that the coffers of the pro-God activists have been
significantly enriched as a result of the Pledge litigation, and we’ve
already heard calls to place God into our Constitution. Yes, the official
antipathy towards atheistic Americans may grow to even greater levels, and
even more blatant discrimination may ensue.

But the same possibility of failure was present in
the past civil rights campaigns. Thus I’m optimistic and planning on
ultimate success. As Americans now opposed to these changes start to
appreciate the plight of atheists, I hope they will increase their
understanding of religious freedom. As we’ve seen with Brown v. Board
of Education, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Americans with
Disabilities Act, when government no longer supports a pervasive personal
prejudice, that personal prejudice becomes less pervasive. When our laws
recognize that atheists can be role models as positive and strong as
Americans of any other life stance, we will further promote the diversity
that has so benefited our society. The possibility of an African-American,
female, or disabled individual being elected president is no longer
remote. The same can be, should be—and, I hope, soon will be—the case
for one who is atheistic.

Michael Newdow, M.D., is an atheist activist. He
brought the initially successful lawsuit challenging the phrase “under
God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and has since sued to abolish
taxpayer-funded chaplaincies in the U.S. Senate and House of
Representatives.

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